By M Santhananaban
Conditions for prisoners do not seem to have received adequate attention and appropriate importance in Malaysia.
Prison conditions have not received deep and detailed scrutiny. But it is clear from the utterances of a serving prime minister and the frantic attempt to obtain a premature and unexpected passage out of prison by a former prime minister that incarceration in a prison is deemed difficult and distressful.
Imprisonment was never intended to be a comfortable, country club living experience anyway. But it should be humane and decent, with some deprivation of personal freedom and mobility.
Information on the details of prison conditions is scarce and remains sketchy.
From what we gather, imprisonment appears to be some kind of enforced confinement with basic, almost primitive, post World-War Two conditions.
It would seem that after a series of trials in a posh air-conditioned courtroom, when convicts lose their final appeal, they will be taken in a secure prison vehicle to serve their sentence in a fortified, sparsely equipped prohibited area.
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Other than the stigma of a prison sentence, they have to wear prison clothes, endure basic bedding and sleeping arrangements. They use common shared toilets and washing facilities. Prisoners are also subject to limited diets and daily movements, including exercise and sunshine time.
Few are aware of when prison conditions were last reviewed or upgraded.
It is also not clear if the conditions have become better or worse from the time when the current prime minister began his second prison sentence on 7 March 2014 and when the former prime minister started his sentence on 23 August 2022, some eight years later. In between, the Vision 2020 target date has come and gone.
A prison sentence has a punitive element to it. But it also provides space for remorse, reflection and rehabilitation.
To subject anyone, including a former prime minister to a prison sentence, is difficult for any judge.
Parliament enacted some laws with a mandatory prison sentence, often at the behest of the executive headed by the prime minister. The judges have no discretion whatsoever to vary or lighten the sentence because the relevant law is written that way for particular offences.
We have to move beyond the seeming one-sentence-fits-all phase. It is about time the whole concept of prison sentences and conditionalities are reviewed.
We need to draw distinctions between different type of crimes: violent crimes versus non-contact crimes; drug addiction versus trafficking; petty thievery and serious white-collar crimes.
For white-collar criminals to be subject to the harsh living conditions in a confined space, with partitioned spaces for convicts serving time for violent crimes, is manifestly inappropriate.
Criminal cases need to be classified according to their specific nature. Incarceration conditions must also vary according to the seriousness of intent and the nature and specificity of a crime.
Further provisions must be made for white-collar criminals to serve the last and major part of their prison sentence in a strictly regulated and monitored home environment.
For that home environment facility, an appropriate levy must be prepaid and agreed to by white-collar convicts to adequately cover the cost of prison personnel deployed and provisions, including monitoring services, that are involved.
At some stage, the concept of a maximum-security prison exclusively for hardcore violent and drug trafficking criminals must also be considered.
As the nation progresses, we must ensure that its prisoners are adequately cared for and fed, protected from untoward danger and humanely accommodated.
There has to be impartiality, evenhandedness and equality in the treatment and handling of different classes of prisoners.
No prisoner must be made to feel like a hapless victim of a deficient and out-of-date prison system.
To update and keep our prison authorities abreast of the latest developments, prison officers must be sent abroad to view and benefit from finding out about prison conditions in Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore and South Korea – the relatively advanced economies of our region.
Dato’ M Santhananaban is a retired ambassador with over 45 years of public sector experience.
- Tegakkan maruah serta kualiti kehidupan rakyat
- Galakkan pembangunan saksama, lestari serta tangani krisis alam sekitar
- Raikan kerencaman dan keterangkuman
- Selamatkan demokrasi dan angkatkan keluhuran undang-undang
- Lawan rasuah dan kronisme
